CRAVEN KICK: THE FREDDY KRUEGER REMIXES
Brian De Palma always said that he considers Hithcock a genre. Which is something I tend to agree with. The world of borrowing, influences and straight out Rip Offs in movies is a wide and varied pace. And Wes Craven made such an indelible mark on Horror with his creation of Freddy Krueger, it changed how Slasher's, Creature Features and Horror movies in general. As part of my Craven Kick I wanted to look at the impact that A Nightmare on Elm Street had on the decade after it. The next four movies I am looking at are examples of how movies in a ten year period looked through the prism or Shadow of Freddy Krueger. What the following movies are trying to do is display two running realities at the same time. And what I find watching these four movie is different forms of Freddy, espeically in the squeal - be weird if he wasn't, keep showing up.
DREAMSCAPRE, DIR JOESPH RUBEN, 1984
I'm starting with a movie that was actually release three months before A Nightmare on Elm Street. So it's not exactly a rip off or a riff or even an influence on Craven. But, it is an interesting look at where genre movies could have gone if we are looking at Elm Street and Dreamscape as cinematic cross roads. With Dreamscape we are still in science vs magic, which was a popular structure after The Exorcist in 1973. The movie focuses on an instituation wanting to be able to enter and control other peoples dreams. So they hire a plucky Dennis Quaid and David Patrick Kelly, still in Warriors mode, as two competing pyschics who are going on quests within peoples' minds. I need to ask, has Christopher Nolan seen Dreamscape? It really felt Inception in a lot of places. While Craven tries to meld the Dream World and Real World together with Krueger, Dreamscape keeps them apart. The world of dreams is a world you can enter willingly, they are controllable. And by those rules there are forces that are out to help and harm, perfectedly personified by Christopher Plummer and Max Von Sydow. I thought I would be far happier to see them face off on screen, but Dreamscape overall has a muddled feeling.
Director Joesph Rubin is trying to keep to many balls in the air, when the plot finally really kicks in we are in the third act. While in the first moments in Elm Street you know exactly where it's heading. But Dreamscape is working in multiple genres, science fiction, fantasy, horror and even a thriller. It feels like each genre brings with it's own ideas. While Elm Street and the movies after, or tried to do had a single lighten rod to guide the movie. So yes, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the better movie. And the world is a little more intersting because we took the Freddy Krueger path.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, DIR CHUCK RUSSELL 1987
Dream Warriors is probably the most beloved of the Elm Street sequels. I've never loved Dream Warriors, which I know is sacrilegious to say. I've never had the nolstagia or the affection, over all it's a movie that has left me a little cold. In saying that Drream Warrirors' the movie the cements the quippy Freddy, and also a great example of Horror Movies in the late 1980s. Freddy's Revenge brought Freddy into the pool party, but it was Dream Warriors brings him into the light and Prime Time with the special effects to match. It's a movie of definate pedigree, Chuck Russell, Frank Darabont, Rober Englund is let loose, Patricia Arquette is a strong lead. Dream Warriors brings back Langenkamp and Saxon. Watching Dream Warrirors last week, it was the special effects where this movie really shines. In the orginal, the effects are really playful and effective, in Dream Wrriors took this idea and went to town.
BAD DREAMS,DIR ANDREW FLEMMING, 1988
Going into Bad Dreams I did not realise that how much of a Dream Warriors Rip Off it would be. I also didn't realise that I would kind of enjoy it more than the Elm Street Threequel. Staring Jennifer - In My Dreams I am Beautiful and Bad - Rubin is a Cult Survivor that was lead by Richard Lynch. Perfect casting, too perfect. Rubin is now living in an psuchiatric hospital with people who are trying to deal with their own Demons. But Rubin is being haunted by the burnt Ghost of Richard Lynch. I forgot to mention a harrowing opening scene, where Lynch just sets everyone on fire.
The meat behind Bad Dreams is far darker and more sinister than in Dream Warriors. Is Lynching haunting Rubin and the other's in the hospital, or is there something else more insidious happening. Rubin just wants to get better and make human connections agian, but everytime she tries, there is an apparent sucide or accident like where someone falls into a giant industrial fan and it rains blood. It's a gnarly scene. In Bad Dreams you are not sure what reality you are in, or what is even reality. In Dream Warriors the kids are not crazy, they are not belived that Krueger is after them, in Bad Dreams we are not sure exact point of view we are really looking through. In looking at a collection of movies about Dreams, it's Bad Dreams that works the best with Dream Logic. There are two specific realities that are at work, but they are often muddled together until plucky doctor Bruce Abbott starts questioning the many deaths and investigates.
There is something manic and angry in this movie. Bad Dreams is squarley about trauma and how it can effect you bodily and bloodily. It could be argued that Andrew Flemming treats sucide flippently, but throughout the years, mental illness has been ingnored, mistreated and experimented on. Bad Dreams has a mice running through a maze quality. You don't know where you are going to land. And maybe that's why I could sink into it more.
BRAINSCAN, DIR JOHN FLYNN, 1994
Do you want to play a game?
It's now the 1994, we are now in a post Jurassic Park world of blending the practical with CGI. And more importantly we have the Internet. It's a time of Hackers, The Lawn Mower Man, The Net. Movies were trying to figure out what this Internet was going to mean. It was a brave new world and the Trolls had not surface, yet. In Brainscan we are still firmly the CD Rom zone. But we are going into a alternate reality. Funnily enough it feels like we going back to 1984 and Dreamscape, as in we are using technology to enter into another sphere. And Brainscan feels like a dream waiting for Dennis Quaid to come in and save. As Edward Furlong plays the CD Rom Brainscan, we are meant to question what's reality and what's not. But what we get is a mow-hawked specter to come in eat all your raw chicken and causing general havoc.
I giggled a lot at watching Furlong getting new CD Roms so he can continue to play a game. It brings back all the memories. An interactive video game is the perfect way to play around with different realities. Especially with the Freddy Krueger-esqu Trickster (played by T. Ryder Smith) leading the procedings. Ryder Smith's does have a vague gremlin quality to it as he feels like a werid glitch breaking what is meant to be the reality you are living in.
What really fascinated me watching Brainscan was the werid Wizard of Oz and Satanic Panic comparision. Don't play the likes of Dungeons and Dragons because there be Demons. Furlong is a horror kid, and very early in the movie is in trouble with the Principle for showing a horror movie to other students. Brainscan is very much meant to be a careful what you wish for, but it's the fear of non horror people. Loving Horror leads to murder, maybe? As much as I love John Flynn, his direction doesn't show a guy who likes or Edward Furlong apparently. Over all Brainscan feels like a moralistic play. Again we are heading back to the mid 1980s and the more moralist Regan era. Early Nineties horror was a strange yet inventive time, filmmakers often throwing everything they could afford at the wall to see what sticks. Brainscan feels, even though using 1994 tecnology feels like it's settling into it Eighties bones where it is comfortable. The Trickster is meant to be an agent of chaos, feels more like a teaching tool. Furlong finds himself in a more murdous OZ and is constantly trying to find a way home, and the Trickster is really unhelpfull Scarecrow. Overall Brainscan feels like a disconnected movie to me, though it can feel very playful at times.
And here we are back at the beginning again. Because you could easily use Brainscan and Wes Craven's New Nightmare made the same year as a cinematic cross road. Like Dreamscape and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Again Craven takes the dream world and reinvents it, turning it into something else. And spends a good chunk of time throwing shade on the other Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And I love everything about New Nightmare. Of course New Nightmare is a prelude to Scream, but you can see where Brainscan came from and how comfortable it is in these already established stuctures, and where Craven was going to go in New Nightmare and change horror yet again.
My next Craven Kick is going to be focusing on the 1990s. Where often it was got Meta or go home.
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